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Elaine’s mother Bernadette reportedly told a magazine at the time: “Elaine drinks too much. It is a problem and I wish she would cut down.

“She will be seeing a professional for help. She was constantly in the public eye and working long hours. Drinking blocks out her stress.”

But there was some good news for the actress, because as she left the show, she revealed she was three months pregnant with her first child.

Elaine went on to land small roles in Gimme Gimme Gimme as Linda La Hughes's Eurovision-singing sister Sugar Walls, and other shows - but failed to secure a firm position, as she had in EastEnders.

She appeared on I'm a Celebrity in November 2005, but passed out twice during the first day in the jungle, later being removed from the show.

It was a difficult year for the star, as her mother died after a committing suicide in front of a London train just months before.

Elaine Lordan made an appearance on 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here' (Image: ITV)

An inquest jury ruled Bernadette, 62, jumped on to a London Underground track in March 2005, just one week after taking a drugs overdose.

Just a month after Elaine left the jungle, she married partner Peter Manuel in the December, but her happiness was to be short-lived as just THREE days later, her sick one-year-old son James died having had surgery for a diaphragmatic hernia.

Elaine's spokeswoman Kate Whaley said in a statement shortly after: "Elaine, Pete and their family and friends are devastated at their loss and request that they are given time to deal with what is an incredibly sad time."

James's condition meant his diaphragm had not fully formed so part of the muscle separating the abdominal organs from the chest cavity was missing. The misplaced organs put pressure on the lungs, preventing them from developing normally.